International Bridges to Justice

Overview

International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) is a nonprofit organization founded to promote human rights in developing countries. IBJ supports the rule of law, good governance and equitable legal rights for all citizens by ensuring the implementation of existing criminal defense, justice and human rights legislation. By building fairer and more effective criminal justice systems, IBJ makes a positive impact on sustainable rule of law and directly deters human rights abuses before violations occur.

Mission

To guarantee all citizens the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from torture and the right to a fair trial. To this end, IBJ supports criminal defender and governmental legal aid efforts in developing countries through training partnerships, legal, administrative, and material assistance.

Program

IBJ’s Defender Programs aim to strengthen the practical skills of public defense lawyers, improve legal aid and public defender infrastructure and increase the awareness of basic legal rights among ordinary citizens. In practical terms, this means training public defense lawyers; providing practical “how to" manuals and website resources; mentoring individual defenders through specific cases; providing offices and equipment; organizing advisement-of-rights campaigns in police stations and prisons; and running awareness campaigns with prosecutors, judges and police. These activities serve to legitimize the role of the public defender in a balanced criminal justice system and ensure a fairer application of the rule of law to all citizens.

Impact

To date, defender trainings have been held in every province in China, reaching over 1,000 lawyers, providing Chinese legal aid attorneys with invaluable instruction in conducting client interviews, case investigation, building theories of defense and trial practice. IBJ’s “Rights of the Accused" Campaign has produced and distributed hundreds of thousands of posters and brochures detailing the fundamental right that every Chinese citizen has upon arrest. Similar inroads have been made into Vietnam, where IBJ hosted the first-ever public defender conference in April 2004, as well as in Cambodia.